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Well I am still trying to figure out what the microsoft advantage is. I have a problem and its a big one.

I bought a Dell inspiron 1501. cheap laptop perfect for college. Came with Vista and dell bloatware. Reinstalled Vista and all drivers first night I had it. It was a little faster but to sluggish. Cannot blame the computer. Installed all updated drivers. all windows vista updates disabled the AERO interface. still slower than molasses in january.

So I take my XP home disc from my old dell PC intall XP update it install all the drivers get SP2 everything. Works blazingly quick. Perfect. everything I asked for. Now 1 week goes by and I complete my first ever home built PC. Needs a Operating system. install XP pro which is currently on my other desktop. set it up go to activate it and I am told that in order to activate it I need to buy a new licensing key. ok fine no problem inconvenient but expensive. I think about it and being on a budget a new OS key is kinda pricey. Wait I got Vista home premium lying around and my new pc will run it flawless.

Fast forward its installed updated perfect. now time to activate. have to talk to microsoft rep. explain whats happening. we cannot activate it because it came preinstalled on another PC from a manufacturer. in my eyes that is highway robbery. I now have a useless coaster.

So I tell them my laptop has a copy of XP on it that is validated and came from another computer preinstalled and that they had no problems activating that. >:(.

I am really mad. I do not think microsoft is justified in doing this. it is in the Eula but I do not think they have the right to enforce that if the computer I am using it on is slow and sluggish and unable to cope with it.

A lot of people like to bash MS for this that and the other, but my reasons for switching to Linux as my primary OS were pretty much due to what you've described above; all too often I'd find that I couldn't do what I wanted to (at least, not legally). I'll admit that Windows does have its place which is why I still have XP on a second partition on this machine...but to be honest, the only time I ever boot into it anymore is to do reverse engineering. If you download Ubuntu and Automatix2, you'll be up and running with just about everything you need for school/mutimedia/internet/whatever.

Arguments over the security, stability, or support of Linux vs Windows are completely irrelevant to me: they both have security holes, and they can both be effectively locked down and protected by someone who isn't an idiot. I've never had stability problems with XP or Ubuntu. Google is my support no matter what OS I'm using (I hate talking to people . I just need something that lets me do what I want, and maybe, just maybe, even helps me do what I want.

that’s a bummer Saber123316. the issue is probably the deal that dell worked out with MS for that copy of vista to be pre-loaded. if you had bought a copy of vista it may have been easier for you. its fairly common for those OEM/pre-load/recovery disk versions to only work on the laptop it was intended for which is a bummer.

my MS story is that had once bought a copy of XP, loaded it and registered it ok, HD crashes so i reload it, of course the validation (before you had to give DNA to validate) fails, so i call MS and after a rant from the tech and the guy telling me the license was for that HD and not that computer which is just friggin ridiculous i eventually get my stuff validated...

And that MS, is why everyone steals your stuff. When its less hassle to steal than actually buy and register, people are going to steal.

I've had that problem with Vista already also. The worst thing about it is that I put 3 boxes up with vista on it and 2 crashed after 2 days. Microsoft told me they wouldn't support it because it must be hardware compatibility issues. I upgraded from XP fracking morons. Vista is hereby written off. I deal with the XP woes of re-validating the license until Vista quits idling at 59%. By the way, prepare for the same thing with Longhorn guys. Vista on steroids.